When Rex put their car in Park in front of their mother’s house, Willow’s stomach turned. The facade of the house looked as it always looked. The unruly flower beds. The ivy climbing up the brick. The red door with its chipping paint.
Rex turned toward his children in the back seat and handed Willow and Asher two empty cardboard boxes each.
“You can fill those two boxes and bring them back home. The rest of the stuff in the house will be taken care of.”
These two simple sentences boiled Willow’s blood. They boiled her blood so furiously that she had to grip onto the door to keep from screaming. Willow sat in a silent rage as so many thoughts exploded in her mind.
Put my stuff in two boxes? TWO BOXES?! You want me to fit everything in two boxes, Dad? I had a life in that house. I had toys that I played with. I had art on my walls. Books that I made notes in. Letters from Mom that I’ve saved. I had things in that house. Lots and lots of things. And I know that you think the things that Mom and I like are stupid, but I like them. I like my collection of skipping stones and I like all the misshapen bowls that I made out of clay and painted all sorts of colors. I have lots of things that I want to keep with me. Two boxes is not enough boxes for all those things.
Bring them back home? HOME?! You call your house home, Dad? Your house is not home. Your house is a house. Because the air-conditioning is always on too high and you’re always saying shh. Because sometimes you bring strangers into it when you think I am sleeping. Mom’s house is home. Because love and laughter were alive in there. And singing and dancing and cooking and art. Life was exciting in that house. In that home. And even if Mom isn’t in there anymore, there’s still life in that home. It’s nothing like your house.
The rest will be taken care of? TAKEN CARE OF?
What does it look like for you to take care of something, Dad? Does it look like forcing your daughter to empty the dishwasher every night?
Does it look like requiring your daughter to place a quarter in a mason jar every time she says like or umm?
Does it look like turning your daughter’s bedroom lights off without a good-night kiss? Sometimes without even saying good-night at all?
Does it look like pressing and pressing and pressing your naked body into a woman’s body in the middle of your bathroom without noticing that your daughter is standing right there watching it happen? I don’t trust you to take care of something, Dad.
I don’t trust you to take care of Mom’s stuff. And I don’t trust you to take care of me.
I want Mom here. I want her here so bad.
Her whole body tensed in the back seat of that car, and then melted at the thought of missing her Mom. At the sight of her house out the car window. And as Willow’s heartbeat slowed and her lungs calmed, she relinquished her grip on the door. Rex stayed seated in the front seat of the car as his son and daughter dragged their feet up the driveway and through the front door.
As soon as Willow opened the door, the floral scent of her mother washed over her. Even though Rosie was gone, Willow could still feel her in every cranny of their home. The worn hardwood floors. The paintbrushes in pick-up-sticks formation on the living room floor. The abstract mural on the hallway wall. The half-read, half-annotated books on the kitchen table. It almost seemed as if Mom would walk in any minute and finish her painting or book or concoction in the kitchen. And then Willow imagined it happening. She imagined her mother skating right through the door and picking up a paintbrush like nothing happened. Turning over the book and reading every word to her. Tossing a wooden spoon to her and motioning for her to mix the batter.
Willow spent an hour placing things from around the house into her two boxes. And then removing something she thought she might be able to part with. And putting something new in its place. And then putting the original item back in. And then taking it out again to make room for another something. And then trying to rearrange the makeup and jewelry and books and toys and markers and pictures and purple leggings and black Converse sneakers in her two boxes to make room for more makeup and jewelry and books and toys and markers and pictures and purple leggings and black Converse sneakers.
But there was no combination or orientation of things in those boxes that would have satisfied Willow. And Willow knew that. So after another hour, Willow bent over, turned backward, curved her little fingers over the opened edge of each box and dragged the only remaining relics of her mother she would be allowed to keep down the hallway. As she moved past the white door of her mother’s bedroom, Willow couldn’t resist the urge to walk in one more time.
The king bed that she had fallen asleep in so many times was still unmade. There were candy wrappers on the bedside table. And two ripped-open Pixy Stix at the top of the pile. The sight of those thin purple-and-white-striped wax paper tubes caused a tightening in the back of Willow’s throat. It caused pressure against her heart. Willow felt tears forming. Forming and preparing to drip out of her.
But what would happen if she were to keep crying? Keep feeling sad? Or scared? Or mad? Who would listen to her? Who would hug her?
Without Mom there, Willow knew the answer was no one.
And so Willow, by her own force of will, untwisted the knot in her stomach, waited a moment for the teary wells in her eyes to evaporate and resumed dragging her boxes down the hallway. This kind of independent determination was brand-new to Willow Thorpe. It felt strange as it coursed through her blood, fortified her muscles and strengthened her soul. But she knew she needed it. She knew she would continue to need it. And she let it seep into her as she dragged her boxes all the way down the stairs and out the door.
When Willow emerged from the house, Rex grabbed her two boxes and then Asher’s and piled them into the trunk of his car. Then they drove off without saying a word.
Willow sat quietly and tearlessly taking inventory of all the things that she wished were in the trunk of Dad’s car with her two boxes. The old chest full of sequin jackets. The pink wigs and floral headdresses. The cowboy hats and fake glasses and feather boas that were in the bottom drawer of Mom’s closet. The charcoal drawing hanging on the living room wall that she, Asher and Mom made one day when it was so snowy that you could only see white when you tried to look out the window. The sculpture in the hallway that Willow picked out at a craft fair in a warehouse somewhere that took an hour to drive to one afternoon when she should have been in school. The camera with all of her pictures of the waves crashing against the rocks at sunrise from the time Mom woke her up before even the sun had risen and brought her to the ocean. The silly shaped cookie cutters that made desserts they would eat before they had their vegetables.
Willow wished she could have brought her purple comforter that smelled like Mom’s perfume. Or the homemade snow globe with little clay versions of her, and Asher, and Mom wearing bathing suits and waving as little glittery flecks swirled all around them. She wished she could have peeled the paint off Asher’s walls and created a secret hideout in the woods behind Dad’s.
She wished she could have put that whole house in the back of Dad’s car. Every inch of that home, each and every thing that was in it, was a memory. Was a part of Mom, a part of herself. She wanted to live forever in the warm and consuming embrace of all of those things. But with each revolution of the tires, with each tree that passed by in the window, Willow was traveling farther and farther from all of those things. Farther from Mom.
And then Asher broke the silence again. With something both simple and profound.
“Dad, how did it happen? How did Mom die?” he asked while he tapped his light-up sneakers together.
Rex’s back straightened and his hands tensed around the wheel. He was quiet for a moment.
“It was an accident,” he said.
And then he paused for too long.
“A car accident.”
Another long pause. And then an exhale.
And then just another, extending, thick pause.